Rick is an RN and Mechanical Engineer. He began his professional career in consulting engineering specializing in energy conservation engineering, HVAC design, central plant design, and system commissioning. He was an early thought leader in the energy conservation discipline of engineering, working with a pioneer in that sector and ASHRAE International President, George A. Jackins, PE. In 2003 Rick was awarded ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer status. Rick’s clients included Coca-Cola World HQ, TVA, Auburn University, UAB Hospital, The US Army Corps of Engineers, Brookwood Medical Center, Shelby Baptist Medical Center, Duke University, and the CDC. He designed central chilled water and steam plants, central laboratory exhaust systems, wood-fired boiler systems, energy management systems, and performed detailed energy analysis on over 20 million square feet of facilities. He also has extensive expertise in systems commissioning. He has, by conservative estimates, served as principal designer and project manager for well over $11B in various construction projects throughout his career. He also served as resident Mechanical Engineer at Auburn University.

In addition to a vast design portfolio, Rick has extensive experience in hospital and facility operations where he served as Director of Engineering for a large hospital, and General Facilities Manager for the BellSouth (AT&T) Corporate Campus.

Envisioning technology at a future state to be centric to healthcare delivery, Rick returned to school to further his education in Nursing. His core clinical tracks includes ED, general surgery and ophthalmic surgery. He immediately transitioned his design and hospital operations experience and technical expertise in clinical informatics, where his leadership and highly successful outcomes have influenced future technical and clinical delivery models for numerous clients.

Rick’s experience within clinical technology is quite impressive. Rick was named to start a new informatics service line for a 500-bed acute facility and led that service line during an ownership change and technology foundation change from Siemens to McKesson. At the prestigious Duke University, Rick was a member of a product development team of the McKesson Horizon ambulatory EMR. Rick was selected by the nation’s largest home health provider to become its first Vice President of Clinical Informatics. Rick has served in consulting capacities as a project manager in full cycle experience, implementing numerous EHR platforms for acute and ambulatory settings. He also served as Clinical Systems Manager for a large health system where he led clinical application support and project management within a highly integrated McKesson enterprise. Rick has extensive, full life cycle project experience involving project management, provider liaison and support, leading clinical build teams, integrated testing, training, go-live, and application support. This includes Epic, McKesson, Meditech, Siemens, NextGen, CPSI and other EHR platforms.

With his many successes in engineering, project management (has led EHR implementation projects over $500M), clinical systems operations, and technology development and operations, Rick is perhaps most widely sought after as a strategic advisor and consultant. His consultancy is focused around redefining the patient experience, EHR optimization, MU consulting, governance, cloud architecture, IT operations, clinical workflow analysis, analytics, BI, and technology integration into new healthcare facility design. His engineering background has been called upon often within informatics, from clinical workflow analysis, optimization of clinical workflows and EHR documentation, to strategic analysis of PMO operations, IT assessments, and Meaningful Use master planning. Often, Rick is engaged as a strategic advisor to C-Suite executives to provide insight into future healthcare delivery; as one hospital CEO recently stated that “Rick has helped us to understand the vision of healthcare delivery in 2015 and beyond,” relating to how clinical technology will impact market share. He is expert (and one of the nation’s leaders) in operationalizing EHR’s and clinical technology. Rick is frequently invited to participate in thought leadership and strategic initiative development for health systems at the C Suite level. Demands for his services and strong work ethic were noted by one of the nation’s leading consulting companies as he was awarded “Highest Client Utilization” of any consultant in the Firm.

With the combination of successful business development, successful operations of clinical departments/divisions in highly competitive markets, and in-depth clinical technology and clinical process knowledge, Rick’s diverse background serves as benchmarks to provide leadership within a complex and evolving healthcare market today.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.